Message to attend Her Majesty delivered by the Yeoman Usher of the Black Rod.
	 The Speaker, with the House, went up to attend Her Majesty; on their return, the Speaker suspended the sitting.
	 On resuming-

The following Members took and subscribed to the Oath, or made and subscribed the Affirmation, required by law:
	Sharon Hodgson,  for Washington and Sunderland West
	Right honourable Owen William Paterson, North Shropshire
	Hugo George William Swire, East Devon
	Right honourable Hazel Anne Blears, Salford and Eccles
	Right honourable Stephen James Dorrell, Charnwood
	Grant V Shapps, Welwyn Hatfield
	Joseph Alan Meale, Mansfield
	Khalid Mahmood, Birmingham, Perry Barr
	Gordon Marsden, Blackpool South
	Jon Hedley Trickett, Hemsworth
	Jamieson Ronald Reed, Copeland
	Tom Harris, Glasgow South
	Jo Swinson, East Dunbartonshire
	Sammy Wilson, East Antrim
	Robert Edward Russell, Colchester
	 Sitting suspended.
	 On resuming-

Stuart Bell: I have heard that old argument over many years. The question of fairness in the voting system goes back to Jeremy Thorpe in 1974. We will have many arguments on the subject but, if the Conservative party has an ideology and a belief in itself, it will want to become the majority party again one day.
	The Labour party is a social democratic party. We will evolve our social democracy, and we believe in governing on behalf of what we believe in. Neither the Conservative nor the Labour parties would put themselves in a situation of permanent coalition with the Liberal Democrats. They might support the Conservatives this time, but they might support the Labour party at another election, as has happened in Germany. Therefore, I join the hon. Member for Ribble Valley in his campaign against the alternative vote system.
	I am very glad to see that the hon. Member for Watford is still in his seat. He is learning to stay in this House of Commons beyond the person who speaks after him. I took a particular pleasure in listening to him, as I spent some of my childhood in Watford. I remember Gammons lane, Leavesdon aerodrome, Watford station and, of course, Watford football club. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that Watford has changed enormously since I went there as a child. I am sure that the diversity to which he referred is a great benefit to the town.
	The hon. Gentleman spoke extremely well, if I may so without flattery. He must remember Adlai Stevenson's remark to that effect that flattery is fine as long as one does not breathe in. No doubt the hon. Gentleman will hear much flattery in this House but, on the occasion of his maiden speech, he will find that it is genuine. I shall give the hon. Gentleman some advice, however-the best speeches are those that come over well in the House but also read well in  Hansard. One can sometimes make a very fine speech in the House that does not read very well in  Hansard. The speeches that read well and come over well in the House are the finest ones.
	The hon. Member for Ribble Valley said that the hon. Member for Watford did not use notes, but he also had his speech in his hand. That is a fine thing to do, as speaking on the Floor of the House is not a memory test. In his early days, the great Winston Churchill made a long speech but, 35 minutes into it, he forgot what he wanted to say. He did not have the speech with him, and he was stuck. From that time on, he always had his speech with him. Even when one does not refer to the text much, it is a comfort to have it in hand.
	When a young man called Tony Blair first came into the House, I told him, "It's not a memory test. You're here to make a point. Therefore, while you may rely on your memory, you should always have a note somewhere." That is the last advice that I shall give to the hon. Member for Watford. The other piece that I would have given him was to make his maiden speech early, but it is too late for that now. He has done it and got it out of the way, and that is fine.
	The hon. Member for Watford is fortunate in one sense and you, Mr Deputy Speaker, will understand this. When I made by maiden speech in 1983-and I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) referred to me-the Deputy Speaker who is in the Chair now followed me, and I have his words yet. The hon. Gentleman will remember this occasion in the years to come. One's maiden speech is probably one's best, but I do not want to discourage him yet.
	In these debates, I normally follow the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), but I have not had that opportunity today. He gives wonderful lectures in classical economics, and I have heard the same speech many times over many years. Ronald Reagan could have done no better. The Laffer curve was alive and well: reducing the rate of taxation increases the revenue that comes from it-we have heard all that before, many times. If we had followed his advice during the recession, I do not know where we would be today. It is probable that 500,000 jobs would have been lost, with more to come, but I do not want to get into a debate with the right hon. Gentleman at the beginning of a new Parliament. I have a great admiration for him, and he renders a great contribution.
	The right hon. Member for Wokingham talked about this being a new Parliament. Those of us in the Chamber this afternoon who were in the previous Parliament will know how shabby it was in the end, and how disreputable it had become. We dishonoured ourselves in the eyes of the public and ruined our reputation.
	We are now in a new Parliament, and every Member of Parliament has a new mandate. The people who voted us in expect the highest standards from us, and that is what we will give them. We should put the past behind us and become the kind of Parliament that we ought to be and will be in the future. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East also made that point.
	The hon. Member for Watford spoke about his constituency. Since the last Queen's Speech, the constituency next door to my own has suffered the closure of the Corus steel mill, where the blast furnace has been mothballed. That unfortunate development cost 1,600 jobs and caused great anger in the local community. That anger was directed at the previous Labour Government, with people wanting to know what was going to be done about the matter. Nationalisation of the plant was suggested, but that was not open to the former Government, just as it is not open to the new Liberal-Conservative coalition.
	The former Member of Parliament for Redcar, Vera Baird, paid a heavy price for all that went on. She lost a 12,000 majority on a 20% swing, and a Liberal Democrat was returned with a majority of 5,000. I wish him well, but I also convey my sincere regrets to Vera Baird. She was a fine Member of this House: she was Solicitor-General and she did not deserve her fate. However, her story is a great reminder to us all that our constituency interests are very important. I remember that she missed many meetings in Redcar because she had to be here for a vote in the House. It is extremely important that we link ourselves to our constituents and stay close to them. That is one of the lessons to be taken from what has happened, and it is of great importance for our constituencies.
	I mentioned Corus, but I should also like to mention One North East, our regional development agency. The new Business Secretary has said that he will keep it, and we are very grateful for that. A programme worth £60 million was introduced on the back of the mothballing of Corus, and that money is very important for us. The programme is going ahead, although I have been told by way of a last-minute message that the £1.5 million pledged by the previous Labour Government to help Corus employees through the Teeskills bursary may be reconsidered. That would be a grievous blow to the people who have been made redundant.
	In the speech that the Prime Minister made on the steps of No. 10 Downing street just after he became Prime Minister, he talked about how he would look after the frail, the elderly and the poorest. It was a noble statement on his part and we will keep him to it. One can hardly say that the Government have not hit the ground running in this post-election period. We had the statement from No. 10, the original coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats, the formal agreement and now today the Queen's Speech. I almost forgot the statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday, in which he reduced the deficit-or whatever the right hon. Member for Wokingham wants to call it-not by £6.2 billion, but by £5.7 billion net.
	We have heard many comments about the deficit and the reasons for it. The Governor of the Bank of England has been invoked to support the Government, saying that it is important that we show the world how we intend to reduce the deficit. We have heard a great deal about the Greek economy, although I have no idea why the Greek economy came to the forefront during the election. The Greeks had a problem with the euro, which was not our problem. The Chancellor said that we had a greater deficit than Greece, which just goes to show what you can get away with saying-of course we have a greater deficit than Greece, because they have 2 million citizens and a very small economy. Why would we wish to link our deficit with those in the eurozone when we are not a member of it? Indeed, the right hon. Member for Wokingham vaunted that fact, saying how wonderful it was that we had stayed out of it, now that it was having a crisis. It is not a crisis, but a difficulty, and its members will come to terms with it.
	Angela Merkel put forward a proposal for budget controls for European member states, with which-much to my surprise-the right hon. Gentleman agreed. But President Sarkozy does not agree with that, and nor do I. I do not believe in treaty changes, and it was peculiar that the Queen's Speech said that no more treaties would be ratified without a referendum, because no more treaties will come out of the European Union. No one wants a treaty, including Sarkozy and the French, the Dutch-anyone you ask. So it is an empty promise.
	I am pleased that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have been to Europe and that they both realise that our future is in Europe. Whatever the criticisms of the European Union and the euro-whether we should be in or out is an argument that died a death a long time ago, so the concession by the Liberal Democrats was an empty one-the eurozone will sort out its problems. As the Prime Minister said, it is in our interests that it does so.
	We had an interesting speech from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East. I have welcomed the hon. Member for Watford, and I also wish to welcome the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), who is not in her place but happens to be the sister of my right hon. Friend. I wish her a great career here and I am sure that she will enjoy every moment.
	The Queen's Speech began by saying:
	"My Government's legislative programme will be based upon the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility."
	Who on earth would disagree with that? They are fine social democratic principles. As Max Hastings wrote in the  Financial Times, we are all social democrats now. He argued that there will never be another right-wing Conservative Government. Remarkably, this coalition has squeezed the right of the Tory party and the left of the Liberal Democrats. My guess is that, as the years pass, the Liberal Democrats will be very squeezed in the middle. Those who wish to go the Conservative way will do so, and those who want to come the Labour way will do so. However, they are experiencing the aphrodisiac of power at present, and we wish them well. They are well meaning, and we hope that they succeed in what they set out to do. We will follow events with great interest.
	We support in the main much of the essence of the Queen's Speech. The attacks on the public service-and 300,000 jobs are in the frame under the proposals set out in the  Financial Times today-in the statement yesterday, and that are likely in the Budget on 22 June and the spending review in September, will contain a lot of pain. That pain will be felt in the public sector. The Government have not yet understood the balance between the public sector and the private sector. The private sector has lost out in the global economy over many years and our manufacturing is down. On Teesside, we are looking into green technologies with the £60 million coming from One North East. As that imbalance has been created, work has been found and jobs created in the public sector, and that has helped the private sector. If it is the philosophy of the Government to modify that arrangement again-the recalibration that we saw under Labour-there will be more unemployment, and that will not be good for the country. Lord Lamont, when he was Chancellor, said that unemployment was a price worth paying. We are getting the same message now, and we will counter it, argue against it and expose it.
	We wish the Government well. I want them to succeed, because I want the country to be stable. We do not want a political crisis on the back of the financial difficulty. We will give them a fair wind, and I know that they act with great sincerity in all that they do. Of course, we will also be Her Majesty's loyal Opposition. We will be strong and alert in Opposition, and we will hold the Executive to account, as will their Back Benchers. This is a new Parliament and a fresh beginning for us all. It can be exciting, great and a noble undertaking, especially for all 232 of the new Members. I wish them all well.

Peter Bottomley: I congratulate the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) on his speech. Anyone who looks at Parliament and thinks that we do not get quality people has not spent time listening to today's maiden speeches and, I am sure, those that we look forward to hearing later. He will be able to look back on today as the time when he first impressed the House of Commons. I hope that he will do well and that other council leaders will also ask whether they might, in time, follow him here as others have before him. The range of talents and experiences that we need in our Members includes those who have served and done important things in local government. I congratulate him again, just as I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) who did equally well, if at slightly less length. I think that the two of them will have much to contribute to the House.
	On the subject of public service, I want to refer briefly to the obituary of Sir Peter Baldwin in today's  The Times. Anyone who reads about his life story and work, before and during his time in the civil service and later in voluntary organisations, will see evidence of his being one of those impressive people who offer themselves not just to Parliament, but to the civil service and for that matter local government as well. The obituary provides an exemplary account of a really fine man, showing how, for example, he helped people who use motorways and made it easier for disabled people to get around. He helped others in so many other ways, too. One would not have thought that this man was also involved in the cypher school at Bletchley, helping to decode Japanese signals. His was involved in a range of activities that were so important.
	Of equal value on the spectrum are people who are often called bureaucrats or managers. As our health service goes on improving, I intend to pay more attention to medical records. There is not much point in asking consultants, nurses and other clinicians to do their job more effectively if the paperwork and the computer back-up do not work. I offer my helpful interest in this issue to Worthing hospitals. I would like to be taken around by those involved at all levels of the medical records process to see how we can free up our doctors and nurses to provide the care people need in hospitals and to make it possible to say to someone in hospital, "If you're here, can we help make you better. If you should not be here, can we make your transition out to recuperation or back home as fast as possible?" All that requires keeping proper records. I am glad that we have managed to throw out most of the NHS IT system, which required my local hospital, on a budget of £140 million, to be given an extra £2 million a year to provide manual back-up for the new computer system, which worked even worse than the previous one. The NHS and the Government were warned, just as they were warned about the completely useless effect of the modernising medical careers and the medical training application service-MTAS-systems a year or so earlier. People must take responsibility for what they do.
	The general election has not finished as there is still an election in Thirsk and Malton. My wife and I were there last Saturday, helping with the campaign. My mother's first cousin represented the constituency for 44 years; if I manage to stay here another nine or more years, I shall beat him, which would be quite a joy. I recommend colleagues new and old to get involved in elections-this one is not a by-election but part of a general election-because it helps people to see what is going on around the country. We should continue to help in that way.
	Even if we decide to pass the referendum Bill on the alternative vote system, I hope people will be warned against bringing in the single transferable vote system, which would have the effect of giving a permanent place in Parliament to the British National party and a permanent place in government to people in the position of the Liberal Democrats now. That is not to say a word against them, just as I would not say a word against the Free Democratic party in Germany, but there is absolutely no reason why they should be guaranteed a place in Parliament. The ability to throw certain people out is an important part of the democratic process. I shall therefore oppose that. I shall also oppose it for the additional reason that under STV more MPs seeking re-election are assured of getting re-elected. I believe that fewer of us should be assured of re-election-or re-selection, for that matter. I think that it should be based on merit all the time.
	To the person in my constituency who in a letter to the local newspaper committed herself to the electoral system that is used for the European Parliament, I say, "That is awful." A closed regional list system is just about the worst system that can possibly be designed. It is easy to describe and fun to operate for the winners, but the number of places that can be changed is very limited. I shall support the Bill on the AV referendum and my constituents can make up their own minds as to whether they want it. AV by itself cannot do too much harm, but I give warning that STV would do a great deal of harm to our parliamentary democracy.
	Radio 5 was one of a number of media commentators on the election. It has produced a book called "Commons Sense", making some recommendations and offering advice from three former MPs. The first is Clare Short, who said:
	"Stay close to the people who vote for you. That keeps your feet on the ground. And don't be a clone; be true to yourself."
	The second is from Matthew Taylor, the Liberal Democrat, who said:
	"The most important thing to remember is that you are no more important than the people who put you there, and your job is to do your best for them. Self importance is the politician's original sin, and self interest the greatest vice."
	The third is from Ann Widdecombe, who said:
	"The prayer I made when I became an MP was 'Please, Lord, never let me lose my sense of outrage'."
	Instead of just processing constituents' problems, we actually need to care about them. If the answers we get are inadequate, we need to be persistent. One of the nicest tributes ever paid to me came from John Sentamu, the current Archbishop of York, who described me in terms of "veni, vidi, velcro"-he comes, he sees and he sticks to it. One thing I am going to stick to-let me send out a warning, or rather an invitation to Ministers to co-operate-is seeing how many NHS consultants have been dismissed on grounds of breaking data protection rules.
	I heard about a case from a doctor in my constituency whom I enormously respect, although it is about someone who is not in my constituency. I think that it was the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) who spoke about diabetes and the special needs of people with south Asian backgrounds. The consultant I am talking about knew that diabetes could be treated not only in hospital, but by educating people and helping them to change their lifestyles. She decided to get a project going under the primary care trust-part of the NHS and where confidentiality is supposed to be involved-and invited 80 such patients to participate. She sent out a list of names and addresses from herself in hospital to herself as part of the PCT-funded project, which had been approved by everybody, and she got sacked. It is difficult to understand quite why. The hospital trust that sacked her referred her to the Information Commissioner's Office, as if she had committed a criminal offence, and to the General Medical Council, which has still not got around to deciding whether there is a case to look into.
	I want to arrange a meeting with the people who run the employment tribunal, which found that she may have been wrongfully dismissed but not unfairly dismissed. They should be put in the same room with employment tribunal experts, the Information Commissioner's experts, the General Medical Council's experts, the hospital trust and preferably someone from the very top of the NHS as well as a Minister. Let us get it out into the open why a doctor who cares so much about her patients that she is willing to go the extra mile should get thrown on the scrap heap for doing something that someone else did not like.
	I have been invited to the Biobank. I shall be attending for a three-hour session at Croydon. It wrote to me asking whether I would like to take part. I do not see the difference between that and someone being asked to come to a specialist education clinic for diabetes. I am going to be persistent on this issue. Until we get some kind of explanation and some kind of justice, I and others will be right to continue to do so.
	I make a plea about standards relating to councillors-parish, district and borough councillors as well as county councillors and those in unitary authorities-as an incredible situation exists at the moment. If a complaint is made about a councillor, that councillor does not get a copy of it. Why should any invigilating committee or independent standards group on a council be expected to look into a complaint from a member of the public about a councillor if they do not tell that councillor-apparently, they cannot under the existing regulations-what the complaint is. I have seen that happen to a person who kindly acted as my agent at the election in respect of a case that both he and I had taken up. They cannot complain about me-well, they can, but there is no committee of MPs to look into it-but they did about him. There was nothing in the case whatever, yet it ran on month after month at enormous expense and to the great worry of my colleague, and with no representation made to him.
	I received the following from the chair of the independent standards committee of Arun district council, which said: "The regulations at the moment only allow the identity of the complainant, unless the complainant has sought and been granted anonymity, and the paragraph of the code of conduct alleged to have been breached. It is quite clear that Arun district council and others are right to say that the councillor about whom the complaints have been made should be sent a copy of the complaint at the same time as being notified that the complaint has been made. Before the assessment sub-committee meet, the councillors should be asked if they wish to respond about whether they consider the complaint should be investigated, or does the complaint indicate some procedural issue that could be more beneficially dealt with by other action? Thirdly, the process of reporting on local assessment decisions of 'investigation' and 'other action' should be changed so they are not public information until (a) the hearing sub-committee has made a decision or (b) the monitoring officer presents a report to the standards committee setting out the action taken to implement and bring to a close a decision of other action."
	I can think of no other sphere in which a complaint can be made and submitted for investigation when the person being complained about does not know what the complaint is, and I hope that the position changes. Whether we keep the standards board is one question, but people who are dedicated to public service should not be exposed to such treatment. Councillors-especially parish councillors, but the same applies to members of councils at every level-should be treated properly.
	Let me say something about prisons. In 1992, the prison population was 44,000. In 2010, it is 85,000. It costs, on average, £41,000 a year to keep someone in prison, and the outcomes of being in prison are bad. I do not think that we have £1,000,640,000 to spend on those extra people in prison when they do not come out better than they were when they went in. I am told-although I have not checked-that a Home Secretary who later became a Conservative Prime Minister said that the purpose of prison was for people to come out better than they were when they went in, and also that he halved the prison population. I am told that it was Winston Churchill in 1910, when he was a Liberal. That is another example of alliance, or of change. Given that Churchill was able to join the Conservatives from the Liberals, I hope that other Liberals will follow his good example.
	The Prison Reform Trust has provided a great deal of information in its Bromley briefings, and I think that any Member of Parliament who has received those briefings should read them and discuss them locally. The Howard League for Penal Reform has made similar points. I hope that, as a result of their work, we will begin to understand that we must engage with Government-this Government, just as much as the last-to establish that the purpose of our policy, and the results of our actions, should be getting the prison population back down to 44,000. There may be a prison building programme, but I would rather try to find ways of ensuring that prisons are not overcrowded. We do not need a prison building programme, but we may need a prison rebuilding programme. Let us try to reduce the number of people who commit offences, and reduce the number of occasions when it is judged that a prison sentence is the right option. I suggest that anyone who reads my speech should also read the early chapters of Jeffrey Archer's first book about prison, which shows how counter-productive even the first weeks can be.
	Let me end by returning to the subject of my constituency, where one of the biggest issues is parking. I have been told that it is possible to raise the amount of revenue and reduce the amount of aggravation by training the parking control people to behave in a way that is humane and helpful, and to stop being jobsworths. I do not want to criticise any individual parking control person in my constituency, because I have not found myself offending, but people have asked me why they have to pay £8 for four hours and 13 minutes in a town centre car park. In the car park in Union place there is 24/7 paying. It is empty after 6 pm. The town centre does not have nearly as many people at that time and they can park on a yellow line.
	Then there are the problems experienced by people with businesses who try to deliver a few bits of supplies in their estate cars rather than in vans, and are not allowed to use an unloading bay for five minutes. Such things are just wrong. Although parking is not directly my responsibility, I suggest that for those involved in public service throughout the chain of life-someone dropping a child at school, a doctor calling at an address, or a restaurateur trying to keep his business going-we should bring humanity back into the rules, and, if necessary, change the rules.
	I have been in this place for some time. I have seen great improvements, which have normally taken place because someone has been dedicated to making the necessary change. If people say that only Government can make such changes, they are wrong. One of the greatest delights of my public service was reducing the incidence of over-the-limit drink-driving by young men by two thirds in about two years, with no change of the law, no change in sentencing and no change in enforcement. I believe that if we manage to get the public finances under control and also improve our social behaviour, we can probably make a great start during the next year or two. Once we start to achieve success, we shall be able to build on it further.
	I hope that others who make speeches today and during subsequent debates on the Queen's Speech will pay more attention to the individual Bills, but I believe that we have an opportunity to make the country better by building on some of the successes achieved by the last Government while also trying to make up for some of their failures.

David Hanson: I agree, and that is the point that I wish to emphasise today. I believe that there is room for greater political accountability for the police service. We need to look at how we strengthen police boards, at how we improve training and at the support we give to chairs of police authorities. The possibility that individuals might become chief constables through direct election might cause conflict that would be detrimental to the service. Ultimately the police service has to serve all he people of a community and not be politicised in the way indicated by my right hon. Friend.

Joan Walley: That was a most welcome intervention; I am glad that I gave way. I give the hon. Gentleman notice that I shall be watching very closely and holding him to account. I hope that a newly formed Environmental Audit Committee will also do so in due course, after the House decides on the role of Select Committees.
	The whole issue of electric vehicles, and a charging network and infrastructure to support them, is really important. I want to flag up the important research done by the Public Interest Research Centre, which launched the Offshore Valuation in Aberdeen a couple of days ago. That work, which was part-financed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, shows that the UK's offshore renewable resources have enormous potential. It is vital that we find ways of putting the research into practice so that we become a net exporter, which would give us huge benefits as far as new manufacturing jobs are concerned, across the country and particularly in the west midlands.
	To go back to something that the hon. Member for Sherwood said, I should say that there is an issue about the legacy of our coalfields. I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) is here, because he understands the issue as keenly as I do in Stoke-on-Trent. I speak as one whose constituency was the first to produce more than 1 million tonnes of coal a year, during the good old Victorian age. We have a legacy, and I say to this Government that that legacy was addressed by the previous Government. We had the coalfield regeneration work that arose from research work originally done by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. That set up funding to deal with the legacy of coal mining in areas such as mine. I am proud that £15 million land reclamation work has been under way; if that did not take place, there would huge problems of land drainage and the collapse of culverts. The work also pays for the Coalfields Regeneration Trust. It is vital that the new Government should ensure that that work can continue in one way or another. Former coal mining areas such as mine still need that support.
	Mention of education policy is made in the Gracious Speech. I have great concerns about the role of academies, as I firmly believe that local authorities should be able to make sure that there is equal provision of education right across the local authority area. I say one thing to those on the Government Benches on this issue. As I understand it, the Building Schools for the Future programme in Stoke-on-Trent is due to get its final financial sign-off in September this year. The plans are well advanced and partners have been chosen. I would not want any of the new investment that will be taking place, in new schools or the so-called free schools, to be at the expense of a carefully thought out programme such as the one in Stoke-on-Trent. We cannot afford to lose it. I hope that the relevant education Bill will look at that issue carefully.
	The money brought forward by the new Government must not be at the expense of the needs of areas such as Stoke-on-Trent. In previous Budgets, there was mention of the relocation of 150,000 civil service jobs from the south-east. Will that plan be involved in the new efficiency savings? We need to know. We need to discuss the Gracious Speech in the context of the Budget and the cuts that are going to be made. I, for one, could say that there are great sites in Stoke-on-Trent. The momentum for securing a relocation of Government jobs from the south-east needs to be carried forward. I hope that Ministers will listen.
	I speak as an honorary doctor of Staffordshire university for my work on regeneration. In respect of the regeneration agenda, ambitious plans are already under way for the Staffordshire university quarter, which is linked to the wider budget of the regional development agency and the Homes and Communities Agency. We need to make sure that we have ministerial input into addressing the needs of such areas, so that what is already under way and progressing is not stalled as a result of blanket cuts that take no account of the needs of people whom I represent in Stoke-on-Trent North.

David Tredinnick: It is a great honour to be called in the Queen's Speech debate, particularly in the first day, and it is great to be back on these Benches. Like the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), I have been returned for the sixth time and it is a humbling experience. I sincerely thank my constituents, of Bosworth constituency, for returning me. I agreed with the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) when he said that the feel of the House had changed. It has certainly changed for us-there are nearly 100 new Conservative Members, who give a new energy. Furthermore, the gender balance is different and there are so many more from ethnic minorities.
	We can look forward to many exciting things with this Parliament. Looking back at the last coalition, in the 1970s, we see that it had the seeds of its own catastrophe in its creation. It did not have any kind of solid majority and Jim Callaghan was defeated because a minority party changed sides. He said afterwards that it was the first time in history that turkeys had voted for an early Christmas, and he was right. In this new Conservative-Liberal coalition, however, we have a chance to go the distance and make a big difference.
	My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has given us a wide-ranging programme, as we would expect. The deficit issue, about which my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) talked at length, is clearly the key issue. We have to get control of our nation's finances. Many interesting and important Bills have been put forward. I will touch on the health reform proposals and education reform later. There is also the "I" word-immigration. It is funny how in every election campaign there is a defining moment when the campaign changes. In this campaign it undoubtedly came with the former Prime Minister's interview with Mrs Duffy. Many of the media completely misunderstood the issue at the time. The issue was not that the Prime Minister had been caught describing Mrs Duffy as a bigot; it was that he did not understand that what she was talking about really concerned ordinary people in Britain. If those remarks have done anything, it has been to enable us to talk about some of the more controversial issues in a sensible way. We were not able to do that before.
	Before I get to those issues, I want to say what a delight it was to listen to my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer), who delivered his speech without notes. He spoke cogently about issues of food production and energy-the issues of the future. I absolutely agree with him that increased food production will be absolutely essential. I also much enjoyed the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington). He was very generous to his predecessor, Claire Ward, and his points about wanting to take people on in business and being unable to do so because of regulations and red tape were well made. This new Bill, whatever we call it-the big reform Bill, perhaps, or the bonfire of the vanities Bill-will be one of the crucial aspects of this Parliament, because there is no doubt that in this country we are caught in a spider's web of our own creation. We have to release the energy and do away with many of the regulations that have been imposed on us over the past 13 years.
	When I toured my 100-square-mile constituency during the election campaign, with its 23 villages and a large town, I was astonished that all the time national identity and national security came up as the key issues. This is linked to cultural identity, to immigration, to a feeling of disempowerment among ordinary people because of the flouting of planning law-I have an issue with Travellers in my constituency-and to anger about people working the system and claiming benefits to which they are not entitled. I was given the example of a man on disability allowance who was walking to the pub with a stick in the evening and laying paving stones in the morning, and was clearly not eligible. It is a good idea that we are going to review that.
	One of the failings of the outgoing Government is that they put us in a situation whereby minority interests have become almost sacred, and at the expense of the majority. That is fundamentally wrong. I am all for protecting minority interests, but we now have a situation, certainly with planning law, in which the boot is very much on the other foot as regards advantage. We need to stop treating the minority as if they were the majority and, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said, we need to stop treating adults like children and children like adults. We need to get back to a rather more realistic regime.
	Let me deal with the "I" word, which came up in Mrs Duffy's conversation-immigration. I am pleased that the incoming Government are tackling this issue head on and are going to do something about it, because it is what people were talking about. In my acceptance speech, I gave a pledge to deal with the issue of immigration, as well as schooling, which is crucial to the county. I believe in my heart that it is frankly absurd for us to complain about the British National party and some of the other fringe parties, which are articulating these concerns, if the mainstream parties will not deal with them. Whether we like it or not, this is what people want us to deal with, and we have to listen. We do not have to do this in a racist way. I spent some years at university looking at policing and public order in a multi-racial Britain-I did it for a degree-and I am very sensitive to this issue, but it has to be addressed.
	The proposed cap for non-European Union immigration is certainly in accordance with what people want. I am afraid that the Labour Government were very remiss in failing to deal with the accession of new states to the European Union and in allowing such a fast inward migration of people, particularly from Poland. One can talk to my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) about the enormous problems that he faces with so many people coming into his constituency. This is very regrettable. Having studied race relations over the years, one of the things that comes through is that the way to really upset communities is to overload them with new communities. I think that this is probably the most tolerant nation in the world. We have a wonderful record of accepting people, going back to the Huguenots. If one looks at London now, it is the most amazing mixture of different races, colours and creeds. People from all over the world love living here because it is largely safe compared with other major cities, although I am not saying that we do not have our problems. It was remiss of the Labour Government not to tackle inward migration from the European Union by getting the derogations that other European states such as Germany and France obtained. If we are to bring in Ukraine, Turkey, Croatia and other such states, I say to my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench that we must deal with this.
	The decentralisation and localism Bill, which hopes to devolve greater powers to councils and local communities, will certainly have an impact on my area. The top-down imposition of planning instructions has been very cack-handed and out of tune with local people's requirements. We have to make some changes in this respect. One of the issues that we have faced in my area is a huge allocation of housing under the old plan, and I want this to be looked at again. We also have in my constituency Travellers' sites that are unauthorised; they have been developed on land that is owned by the Travellers, completely riding roughshod over local planning requirements. There is a site called the Good Friday site, which, predictably, was built on Good Friday. I hardly need tell hon. Members why-it was because the council officers were all off work. There was no stop order, and by the following bank holiday Monday the tarmac had been laid and the concrete and infrastructure were there.
	I have been approached by councillors from Ratby-Chris Boothby and Ozzy O'Shea-who deal with this all the time. They tell me that the most difficult aspect is circular 01/2006, issued by the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which tips the balance by enabling planning officers to claim that they have to treat the needs of the Traveller community above those of the established community. I do not mind an even playing field, but this tips the balance; it is also used on appeal. I ask my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench to consider immediately suspending this circular.  [ Interruption. ] As my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) says, this is a major and difficult problem for us. There is an unfair advantage, and it must be put right.
	I referred to the man who was claiming disability allowance when he should not have been doing so. I welcome the Bill from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to co-ordinate, slim and make more effective the benefits system and welfare generally. I pay great tribute to him for all the work that he has done. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) has also worked very strongly on this. It irritates ordinary people so much to think that people are in there fiddling the system, and it must be made better.
	It is a rare privilege, Mr Deputy Speaker, to talk in the Chamber without having a time limit, but I am not going to abuse the situation. In the old days, when we carried out filibusters, I have spoken here for an hour and a half, but I am not going to do that tonight, I can assure you; I shall finish fairly soon. However, I want to say a few words about the academies Bill. I very much welcome the idea that every outstanding school can be an academy. There may be a high take-up in Leicestershire, because we have several excellent schools. However, I have a question: is this going to apply automatically, or will they have to apply for it? In my county, the funding of schools has been an absolutely crucial issue. I would not want academy schools to attract more funding than the other schools maintained by the county council. We are in a most dreadful position. The designated schools grant in Leicestershire is the lowest in the country, and for many years I have been campaigning, with colleagues, to have that situation rectified. We are very much disadvantaged. If we take a lot of schools out of the system and make them academies, that may make it harder for the county council to provide the excellent services that it provides now. However, will not miss the 4,000 instructions that come down from the Education Department every year. If we can get rid of this top-down, Stalinist structure, that will be very welcome.
	I have for many years raised issues of health care in the House, and I am delighted to see in the document produced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, the coalition programme for Government, the attention that will be given to providing doctors and patients with more powers. I have been arguing that that should be the case for a long time, and it is really important that we consider the issue of integrated health care with great care. Most people in this country want access to integrated health care, by which I mean alternative therapies such as Chinese medicine, acupuncture, homeopathic medicine and all the back treatments that are available. The issue is whether we have effective regulation. The last Government had a consultation period on the regulation of herbal medicine and acupuncture, but they did not decide on statutory regulation. It is important that the new Government do, and I encourage my right hon. Friends to examine the matter.
	The former Member for Oxford West and Abingdon campaigned vociferously against integrated health care and complementary medicine. He lost his seat, and the word is that part of the reason for that was that he was so vociferous about the matter, and people were angry about it. In my constituency, I had a Science party candidate put up against me, to make publicity, specifically because I support complementary medicine. He could certainly use the publicity, because I polled 23,000 votes and he got 176. What kind of message does that send out? It shows that we must examine the matter seriously as something that can make a major contribution to health care.
	It is always a delight to serve under you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I am grateful to you for calling me this evening. It is a great honour to me and my constituents for me to have been called in the Queen's Speech debate. I promised them in my acceptance speech that I would not duck the big issue of immigration, which affects and concerns them, and that I would raise the matter of schools in the county and other major issues. I have done that tonight, and I am most grateful to you.

Martin Horwood: Surely the logic of that argument is that the bar should be set even higher, perhaps to the 66% that the Labour Government introduced in the Scottish Parliament?

Christopher Chope: I am interested in the fact that my hon. Friend was and is in favour of fixed-term Parliaments, and he is quite right to reflect on the balance of opinion within the Conservative parliamentary party and throughout the House more widely. At one stage during the previous Parliament, it seemed that the then Government were flirting with the idea of a fixed-term Parliament. Indeed, I think that the Modernisation Committee-I shall be corrected if I am wrong-looked at the idea for a time and took evidence on it, including evidence from Officers of the House. The whole project was then kicked into the long grass.
	I revert to what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden. The Prime Minister said that
	"we are determined to deliver that stability with our lasting coalition. The introduction of a fixed term Parliament was, therefore, a necessary and important measure to propose. Obviously, this is a new idea for our Parliament and necessitated a mechanism for dissolution. I want to reassure you that a mechanism for a no confidence vote in the Government is unchanged."
	That is an important statement. The Prime Minister continued:
	"Rather, what our proposals would do is give Parliament a new power to dissolve itself"-
	rather like a Beechams powder, although that is perhaps an unfair analogy. That power, he said, is
	"currently only exercised by the Prime Minister. We are, in effect, taking a power away from the Executive and putting it in the hands of Parliament, not the contrary. As you know it has always been my intention to reinforce the powers of our Parliament. I hope that this proposal is one positive measure to do just that."
	In my final quotation from the letter, the Prime Minister says:
	"The House of Commons will remain able to call a vote of no confidence in the Government as at present. If that took place, a vote of 50 per cent plus one would mean that the Government falls and unless an alternative workable majority can be formed within a specified number of days, a General Election would be called."
	The convention that prevailed meant that if the Government were defeated, the Prime Minister would go to the Sovereign and invite her either to dissolve Parliament or to invite somebody else to form a Government, but the new proposal seems to leave Her Majesty out of the equation. I do not know whether that is the intention, and if I am incorrect on that, I am sure that I shall be corrected in the Minister's response.
	I am not criticising anything that has been proposed; all I am doing is asking questions and saying, "Why is the change to the convention on Dissolution necessary or desirable?" The Prime Minister is giving up his constitutional right to request a Dissolution, and I can understand that that is very important-a matter of honour between himself and the Deputy Prime Minister. It means that the Prime Minister cannot pull the rug from under the coalition, but why do we need legislation or, indeed, a motion to achieve that? Surely the Prime Minister's word is sufficient. Such a unilateral commitment gives the Liberal Democrats the assurance that the Prime Minister will not pull the rug, but during the debate on the Loyal Address earlier today the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) said that the measure might provide for less stable government, because it would enable the Liberal Democrats to withdraw from the coalition and vote against the Government on a motion of confidence without causing a general election. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will be able to deal with that issue. If at some stage the Liberal Democrats withdraw from the coalition, the threat hanging over them, as things stand, is that the Prime Minister would go to the Queen and invite her to call a general election. But if the Prime Minister said that he would not do that in any circumstances, but had no reciprocal Liberal Democrat commitment not to withdraw from the coalition in any circumstances, the Liberal Democrats could withdraw and align themselves with the left, as the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) would have much preferred them to have done in the first place. They could create an alternative coalition.
	That predicament is unlike the situation that prevailed immediately after the general election, when the Liberal Democrats, those on the left and the nationalists were not able to form a sufficient number to guarantee staying in Parliament and enjoy a confidence and supply measure of support. In the situation that I have described, the Liberal Democrats would have no such constraint-they would be able to form a minority Government and stay in office for the remaining period of the fixed-term Parliament. I hope that that nightmare scenario, from a Conservative perspective, is just a nightmare and is not realistic, but I have yet to be persuaded of that. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to persuade me.

Michael Connarty: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for making this the subject of the first debate of the Adjournment process.
	I do not believe that this situation was caused by euphoria but, perhaps, by panic when the two parties found that they could not trust themselves by having the normal system of a simple majority. Before I came to this House, I taught government and political systems. I told my students that the House of Commons was based on the support of a majority of MPs, and that that was fundamental to our process, which was not like the systems that existed in other countries that were designed for coalitions. That has been the way in which our Governments could be held to account, and so they have been up until this time-until the introduction of the 55% concept, which my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) has called the Mugabe clause.
	Much has been made of the existence of other systems-Slovenia was mentioned earlier-and particularly the system in the Scottish Parliament, where 66% is required for its dissolution. The difference is that that happened after almost 20 years of debate, with a constitutional convention, a great deal of study by Scottish constitutional experts, and advice on how to design a system whereby the Parliament could not have a majority held by one party. It is therefore not a good comparator; nevertheless, it has been made much of by my Liberal Democrat colleagues in the coalition in Scotland.
	That system was passed through an Act of Parliament here-the Scotland Act 1998-after great debate and scrutiny through a proper system of constitutional Committees in this House. It was designed to prevent any party from having a majority. It therefore had to bolster the Parliament as constituted so that it could run for its fixed term of four years. There is no similar proposal, I understand, for the Commons to bring in a proportional system. AV has been talked about in relation to a referendum, but there has been no proposal to bring in proportionality on the same basis as in Scotland.
	Let me explain the system simply. If a party's constituency Members win all the seats in a region, all the regional list Members are elected from the other parties. The party that elects all the first-past-the-post Members, and which therefore clearly has the popular vote of the people of the region, gets no further Members of the Scottish Parliament. The result is either a coalition, as existed between the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party for two Parliaments in Scotland, or a minority Government, as we have at the moment. I believe that the Scottish National party Government are doing great damage to Scotland, mainly because they are supported on a supply basis-I do not know about a confidence basis-by the Conservatives in the Scottish Parliament. A minority Government run for two years unless two thirds of the Parliament votes to get rid of them. The system is completely different and not really comparable with the system that we are discussing.
	The parties in the UK Parliament went to the people of this country and asked for a majority, and they failed to get one. I agree with the hon. Member for Christchurch that that strengthened this Parliament. It was not the decision of the people of the UK to have a strong Government bolstered by a manipulation of the constitution such as the proposed 55% rule. I put it to the House that breaching the control of the UK Parliament through anything other than a simple majority is to betray the democratic credibility of the House and the electoral process in which the people have just voted. It is a shameful act, so I have a question for the Deputy Leader of the House: are there no depths to which the Liberal Democrats will not stoop to hang on to their tainted share of power?